Service Robots at Your Service.
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
Exaptec, based in Melbourne – Australia, is a leader in the design, development and deployment of Service Robots to a wide range of industries including healthcare, retail, government, education, hospitality and others.
With a strong Robotics Research and Development Division and world-class capabilities in the solution integration of robotics hardware and software; artificial intelligence; cloud and Internet of Things (IoT), Exaptec has released the first version of its remarkable autonomous cloud robotics platform called OMNI.
OMNI was developed to leverage Exaptec’s strong partnership with an Australian manufacturer of omni directional wheels namely Rotacaster, a world leader in the delivery of omni directional wheel solutions for transport, mobility, conveyors, warehousing and robotics.
The OMNI are autonomous mobile robots that operate safely in any commercial warehouse and industrial environments shared by people. The solution enables orders to be processed faster, more efficiently and lower operational costs by working 24/7 and eliminates order errors, thereby, allowing operational staff to focus on higher value tasks. Various sensors prevent collision and allow OMNI robots to work collaboratively with other transporter robots and humans alike.
Additionally, the solution simplifies point-to-point materials handling and processing. In today’s dynamic warehouse environment, organisations need to have an efficient and automated process workflow embedded into the solution, with minimal training, and no major infrastructure or costly facility redesign.
The Exaptec OMNI robotics platform is the most feature rich and robust tripod configuration omni wheel robotic solution available on the world stage today.
The OMNI platform has been designed to accommodate via a unique latching system, various intelligent payload subsystems that satisfy multiple use cases particularly in hospitals and hospitality segment. As an example, the OMNI can accommodate payloads that are specific for food delivery, mobile mini warehousing, medicine and medical equipment dispensing, disinfection and safe transportation of bio-waste.
In practice, a hospital may employ ten to 30 OMNI robots as an intelligent autonomous swarm of robots that can easily plug-n-play multiple payloads for multi-use roles 24/7 and in lights-on or lights-out conditions.
Each OMNI robot has a sophisticated array of interchangeable sensors that include 3D cameras, 2D cameras, microphones, ultrasonic, location sensors, touch sensors, temperature and humidity sensors and others, all integrated using the Robotics Operating System software developed by Exaptec. The swarm robotics system is managed by Exaptec cloud robotics partner C2RO to provide a cloud-based software engine. The vast array of features includes tele-presence, audio and video sharing, autonomous navigation with SLAM, face and object recognition, a mission control dashboard, and a robot status dashboard.
The OMNI robotics solution is currently in pre-release testing and will be available commercially on Q3 2018. Manufacturing will commence in April 2018 in Australia. OMNI is an Australian product designed and manufactured by Exaptec Robotics Pty Ltd, a fully Australian owned company, with offices in Australia and New Zealand.
Ketan Patel, Managing Director, Exaptec New Zealand, is a highly focussed technology evangelist with an extensive career spanning all business sectors and many disruptive technologies, such as: IoT, Analytics, Robotics and Process Automation. He is driven by the wish to dispel myths about robots and educate people on how robotic technology will resolve personal and business challenges, particularly in the Service, Education, Healthcare and Industrial Sectors. Email: [email protected]
Captions:
Photo1: Nicci Rossouw, CEO, Exaptec at a recent Gartner event in Brisbane, Australia, where Expatec was Gartner’s official Robot Partner.
Photo2: The OMNI are autonomous mobile robots.
Photo3: The OMNI Base with a hole in the middle.
Photo4: OMNI robot used to transport dangerous biohazard waste.
Photo5: OMNI with a tub payload.
Prakashji, Filler for this article with pix (Filler, not Box-item)
Caption:
The Omron/Adept automated guided vehicle (AGV).
Why Service Robots are Booming Worldwide?
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) forecast on service robots.
Sales in service robots for professional use will increase 12 per cent by the end of 2017 to a new record of 5.2 billion US dollars. And the long-term forecast is positive too, with an expected average growth rate of 20 to 25 per cent in the period 2018-2020.
“In terms of value, the sales forecast 2018-2020 indicates a cumulative volume of around 27 billion US dollars for the professional service segment,” says Gudrun Litzenberger,
General Secretary of the IFR. “Robots for medical, logistics and field services are the most significant contributors.”
At the same time, the market for personal service robots which assist humans in their everyday lives is also progressing rapidly; it is projected that sales of all types of robots for domestic tasks – e.g., vacuum cleaning, lawn mowing or window cleaning – could reach an estimated value of around 11 billion US dollars (2018-2020).
“Robots are clearly on the rise, in manufacturing and increasingly in everyday environments,” says Martin Hägele, IFR Service Robot Group. “The growing interest in service robotics is partly due to the variety and number of new start-ups which currently account for 29 per cent of all robot companies. Furthermore, large companies are increasingly investing in robotics, often through the acquisition of start-ups.”
European service robot manufacturers play an important role in the global market: about 290 out of the 700 registered companies supplying service robots come from Europe. North America ranks second with about 240 manufacturers and Asia third with about 130.
Further progress will rely on entrepreneurs taking up disruptive technologies and deploying them for new applications and markets. In the US, about 200 start-up companies are working on new service robots. The European Union plus Switzerland count 170 companies that are creating a new entrepreneurial culture for the service robotics industry – followed by Asia with 135 start-ups. Virtually all economies are attempting to foster a vibrant entrepreneurial environment and the service robotics industry has become one of the focus areas of their public policies.
Robotics in professional applications has already had a significant impact in areas such as agriculture, surgery, logistics or public relations and is growing in economic importance. To meet this demand, robots will play an even greater role in the maintenance, security and rescue markets.